


don't pass me by

by laurathecrab



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 09:48:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4015099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurathecrab/pseuds/laurathecrab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>written for the prompt "niall and harry get stuck babysitting." </p><p>or, harry and niall need some communication about their relationship, louis likes to meddle and is in need of a sitter, and a mess is made with mac and cheese.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't pass me by

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ilookedback](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilookedback/gifts).



> thanks to ilookedback for the great prompts, i hope you like this. 
> 
> thanks to the people who looked this over for me and chatted about everything that's gone on in this fandom the past couple of months -- this was not actually the fic i was intending to write when i got my assignment, but zayn leaving messed up all my plans, so i'm grateful for the help and encouragement. <3
> 
> finally, thanks a ton to the mods for setting this all up. i've never published a fic before and i really wanted to participate in this when i heard about it because i think it's such a nice idea and one of the things i love about fandom is how inclusive it is. i had a great time writing and i know a lot of work probably went into it, so you two deserve all the props in the world. 
> 
> title is from the beatles song of the same name!

Niall isn’t sure how he got roped into this. It’s not that he doesn’t like kids, especially Louis and Liam’s girls, he does. It’s more that he’s most comfortable being around kids that he can hand back to their parents when they start to smell or cry; he’s just not equipped to handle anything more than making silly faces at infants or maybe teaching a toddler how to play footie. Hell, he’s not sure his friends expect any more of him than to be a goofy uncle type person to their children, and in all honesty, he likes it that way.

Niall’s life is simple, for the most part. He goes to work, he kicks a football around, he goes to the pub with the lads. He used to see Harry a lot on the weekends, but that’s mostly done now, although he sometimes sees him when they go out as a group. It’s not the same though, and Niall doesn’t really like to think about it.

Today’s a Saturday, he’s more than a bit hungover, and he’d planned on sleeping his morning away, maybe doing a bit of writing in the afternoon. Bloody Louis though, called him in a tizzy at arse o’clock in the morning, and before Niall was even fully awake, he was being bombarded with requests to watch the girls this evening because their sitter is ill and they have some important function for Liam’s work to attend. 

“Uhh..” is all Niall could respond. He didn’t want to leave his friends in the lurch, but he also didn’t want to babysit on a Saturday night, like, at all.

“Come on Nialler, you told me last night that you don’t have anything happening tonight. Please?” Louis sounded pathetic, he never says please unless he’s really desperate. Niall sighed.

“Why can’t you get Harry to do it? He’s Rosie’s godfather,” he said, trying (and probably failing) to sound totally casual. Harry hadn’t been at the pub the night before. Niall had pretended not to notice, instead doing shot after shot at the bar with Bressie.

Louis didn’t answer right away. “Harry’s got a thing tonight I don’t want to ask him to cancel,” he finally said.

Niall knew what that meant. “He’s got a date, you mean.” Louis dodged the question, instead mentioning that he’d ask Zayn if he could, but he and Perrie are up North doing wedding things. Like Niall hadn’t already known that.

Niall sighed again. “Okay, what time do you need me over there?”

“Six,” Louis said, “or actually make it five, I think we’re technically supposed to get there at six. Thanks Nialler, you’re the best.” And with that, Niall had some unwanted plans for Saturday night. 

\--

Louis and Liam’s girls are lively, to say the least. Rosie is very much Louis’s daughter, mouthing off at every opportunity and somehow always managing to be covered in something sticky, even when she’s being watched like a hawk. Grace has rapidly transformed from the happiest baby Niall’s ever met to the moodiest toddler he could imagine. She’s always in something she doesn’t belong in, and when you move her away from the dangerous objects, she screams bloody murder. Niall had been aware of that before tonight, he spends enough time around Liam and Louis’s flat, but he’d never had to actually deal with it first hand. It’s the first time, he realizes as he tries to get them to eat dinner, that he’s been roped into babysitting both of them by himself; he used to take Rosie occasionally as a baby and he’d helped Harry with the two of them a few times, but never on his own. It’s a lot more difficult to do it on his own. 

He arrives right at five as promised, impressed that Louis and Liam are both already dressed. He’d seen Louis for a bit last night but Liam had stayed in, so Niall gives him a quick hug, careful not to wrinkle his suit. They tell him to call if he or the girls need anything, that the girls’ dinner (fish sticks!) is in the oven, and in a flurry of kisses on cheeks and promises from the girls to be good for Uncle Niall, they manage to be out the door by 5:10. Impressive feat, that. 

Of course, as soon as their parents leave, Grace starts screaming and Rosie starts whining at Niall to let her watch telly. In the midst of trying to quiet them both, Niall lets the fish sticks burn and apparently that’d been the last of the box, so he scrounges in the cupboards for something he can both easily make and that the girls might actually eat, and settles on boxed mac and cheese. 

He miraculously gets them to stay in the lounge with lots of toys and the telly on while it cooks (Liam had requested no telly, but desperate times call for desperate measures), and eventually ends up sat at the kitchen table, Grace strapped into her booster seat with Niall trying to coax food into her mouth and Rosie staring glumly at her bowl.

“What’s wrong, love?” he asks her, already dreading the answer.

“Daddy promised me fish sticks,” she pouts. 

Niall sighs. “Well maybe you can have fish sticks another night, this is what Uncle Niall’s made you.” He turns back to Grace, only to find that she’s got her hands in her bowl, squishing the noodles between her fingers. Now he’s probably going to have to give her a bath, something he’d been hoping to avoid. 

“I want fish sticks,” Rosie says again, sitting back and crossing her arms against her chest. 

“Well there are no fish sticks. So eat up and then we’ll see what there is for dessert later, alright?” He knows better than to get upset when a four year old won’t eat her dinner, but she’s not making it easy for him. He rubs at his temple, wishing he’d doubled the amount of post-hangover paracetamol he’d taken earlier.

“I don’t want this. Can’t I just have dessert now? Pleeease.” She flashes him her biggest smile. She bloody learned that from Louis, he knows it. 

He’s shaking his head as the doorbell goes. Who on Earth could that be right now? He debates taking Grace’s bowl away from her, but as she’s already a mess, he leaves it be, not wanting another screaming fit when she seems happy. He pushes his chair back from the table and makes his way across the disastrous living room to the door, fully aware that he has mac and cheese smeared across his shirt and probably his face and hair as well. It doesn’t matter, really, he’s got no one to impress tonight. 

He doesn’t bother to try to see who’s knocking, just swings the door open, not caring much who it is. 

“Oh, hi,” he says, flustered, when he sees Harry’s face beaming at him. 

Harry steps past Niall where he’s still standing at the door. “Hi to you as well,” he says, toeing his shoes off and surveying what he can from the entryway, giving Niall time to at least shut the bloody door.  “Louis let slip that you’ve got the girls alone tonight, thought I’d come over and see if you need help.”

Niall stiffens. He doesn’t need Harry’s help, he’s perfectly competent enough to do this on his own, thanks very much.

Harry makes a face at him, like he knows exactly what Niall’s thinking. (Harry always knows what Niall’s thinking, except when it matters the most, apparently.) “It’s not that I think you need the help, just thought you might like some.” He grins, dimple popping in his cheek and Niall can’t even stay mad at him for more than five minutes.

Niall doesn’t answer, not sure he can really defend the toys scattered across the floor and the shreds of paper everywhere (where Rosie had found scissors and what she had cut up, he couldn’t say) or the fact that the television is still playing some obnoxious show about baby animals even though the girls are still in the kitchen.

Which -- “oh no,” he finally says.

Harry looks alarmed.

“I left the girls alone with mac and cheese,” he tells him, cringing. Harry probably would have made them something organic and healthy. Or he at least wouldn’t have burnt the fishsticks.

“That’s alright, Nialler, I once had to call my mum while I was watching them because Rosie managed to get into the hot cocoa powder and ate a whole bunch of it. Err, don’t tell Louis and Liam that, yeah?” Harry grins at him and then takes off for the kitchen, calling the girls’ names as he goes.

He hears Rosie shriek, “Uncle Harry, I thought you weren’t coming over tonight!,” followed by the quiet murmur of Harry’s voice; Niall can’t make out the words over the telly. Which, obviously Niall hadn’t known Harry was coming either, and wasn’t he supposed to have a date? He moves to the kitchen, only to find Rosie in Harry’s lap, Grace still in her chair and now completely covered in cheese from her dinner, squashed noodles all over her chair and the table in front of her.

Niall hadn’t gotten a good look at Harry when he came in, but now he does, taking in his tights jeans and expensive shirt and styled hair. Niall’s not dumb enough to ask about his date in front of Rosie -- it’s bad enough that he’ll probably never hear the end of Harry coming to his rescue or however Liam and Louis decide to spin this, but he’s not giving them the satisfaction of knowing he asked that question, and he knows it will get back to them if he does so now.

Instead, he clears his throat, prompting Harry to look up from the very serious conversation he seems to be having with Rosie regarding her dinner. His mouth quirks up when he catches Niall’s eye. “Why don’t you take this monster,” he gestures at Grace, who is still happily squashing noodles between her fingers, “and get her in the bath, while I get Miss Rosie to eat up her dinner like the good girl she is.”

Niall is so relieved that at least one of them is (possibly) going to eat something that he nods dumbly, crossing the room to pull Grace out of her seat, all while trying (and failing) to not step in any discarded noodles. He cuddles her against his chest, all hope of saving his t-shirt from cheese stains already gone anyway, and carries her out of the kitchen and into the bathroom. She’s of course mad to have been taken away from her dinner (aka her new favorite toy), and stomps her foot when he puts her down to run the bath.

“Come on, now, love,” he says, “let’s get you cleaned up and then we’ll have a cuddle and watch a movie, alright?”

She pouts a bit but doesn’t start to scream, so Niall thinks he can count it as a win, squirting bubble bath into the running water and keeping an eye on Grace so that she doesn’t wander off. He’s trying to concentrate on the problem at hand, namely getting this child to let him clean her, and not on the fact that Harry is sitting downstairs at this very moment. Harry, who Niall has very carefully not been alone with for weeks, who still, against Niall’s better judgment, makes his heart beat a little bit faster every time he walks into a room. Harry, who Niall thought he might actually have a future with, and what a mistake that had turned out to be.

He’s jarred away from his thoughts by Grace grabbing onto the towel that’s hanging by the door and just about toppling over when it gets stuck on the hook instead of coming down as she expected it to. He braces himself for the inevitable screams, which come a moment later. He knows she’s fine, just a bit startled, but he gathers her in his arms anyway, rubs her back and sings her a silly song he’d made up for Rosie years before that always does the trick until she calms down, screams quieting to small sobs against his shoulder. He reaches down and turns off the tap, needs to let some of the water out because the bath is a bit too full now.

“You ready to get clean, love?” he asks her, and she nods, still a bit pouty but no longer crying. He presses a kiss against her forehead and gently sets her down so he can strip off her food encrusted clothes. The bath itself goes surprisingly smoothly, although Niall’s clothes are water-logged in addition to being cheese stained by the end, and when Grace has been bundled into her fuzzy pajamas (conveniently left in the bathroom by one of her dads earlier, as they seemingly predicted a bath would be in order tonight), he carries her back into the lounge, where he finds Harry and Rosie already cuddled on the sofa talking quietly with bowls of popcorn sitting on the coffee table in front of them, waiting for Niall and Grace to turn on a movie.

“Come on, Nialler,” Harry says to him, “we saved you a spot.” Rosie pats the spot next to her, and Niall sinks onto the couch, Grace still in his arms.

“You’re not supposed to carry her around, she’s supposed to _walk_.” Rosie says, making a face at him. Niall makes a face back.

“And you’re not supposed to watch all this telly, are you miss?” Harry retorts, “so no one needs to tell your dads anything, yeah?” Rosie grins at first Harry and then Niall conspiratorily before settling back against Harry’s side. Harry hits the play button on the remote and (Niall should’ve seen it coming) the opening credits of _Frozen_ begin to roll. Harry catches Niall’s glance over Rosie’s head and shrugs one shoulder, mouths “could be worse,” and focuses his attention on the television screen.  Niall had liked _Frozen_ the first dozen or so times he’d seen it, but he’s had enough at this point.

Miraculously, as Olaf sings about his dreams of summer, Niall feels Grace doze off against his chest and when he glances over at Harry and Rosie, he sees that she too is asleep. Harry doesn’t look far from sleep himself. Niall carefully stands, cradling Grace against his chest, carries her to her room and puts her down in her cot. He lingers for a moment, looking down at her sleeping, deceivingly angelic face, before slipping into the hallway, leaving her door ajar, just in case.

Rosie’s door is open, and Niall can see Harry leaning over her, trying to slip his arm from beneath her without waking her up. Niall can’t help but linger, looking at Harry’s strong shoulders and gentle face, unaware that he’s being watched. Harry has such a knack for this and Niall can’t help but be a bit jealous. He always has to work so hard at everything, and Harry is a natural, winning people to his side with a dimpled grin and a bit of a cajole, even (or maybe especially) children.

Niall is jarred out of his thoughts by Harry straightening his back and stretching his arms above his head; his back muscles ripple and Niall finds himself weak at the knees. He shakes his head, moves down the hall before Harry can catch him staring, flops back down on the sofa, flicks off the telly, and takes a moment before surveying the damage.

“You alright, Nialler?,” Harry asks, coming up behind him. Niall doesn’t know how much time has passed; he reckons it hasn’t been long but who really knows at this point.

“Yeah, just a long day,” he answers. He doesn’t know what to do now that the girls aren’t awake to distract them. He doesn’t want to look at Harry, afraid that his face will give away everything he’s been thinking.

Harry circles to the front of the sofa, sits down far too close for Niall’s liking, or maybe not close enough. “I can imagine, those girls are a handful. Rosie’s getting to be more and more like Louis the older she gets.”

Niall can’t do anything but nod and then stand abruptly, moving towards that kitchen. “Going to do the dishes,” he tells Harry.

“I’ll dry,” Harry volunteers, not taking the hint. Niall still doesn’t know why he’s even here really, how he’d known to show up. Niall didn’t need rescuing, and even if he did, Harry’s the last person he wants rescuing him.

He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees that the mess on the table and floor have been cleaned up, presumably by Harry while Niall was giving Grace her bath. He glances behind him, quirks his mouth up when he catches Harry’s eye. “Thanks for that,” he says, nodding in the general direction of the table.

Harry grins at him. “Not a problem,” he says, “I’m always happy to lend a hand.” Niall knows that’s true, but he doesn’t dare ask if Harry means he’s always happy to help Niall specifically, or if he’s making a general statement.

They do the dishes in silence, Niall washing and handing them seamlessly off to Harry, long fingers moving the dish towel easily over the clean bowls and spoons. Niall misses this, the easiness of just being with Harry; it’s easier to slip into than he had expected it to be.

It’s not that they’d broken up; to say that was to say they’d ever been officially together, which was not the case at all. It was more that they’d been an almost, or at least Niall had thought they were, and then all of a sudden Harry stopped caring, not even bothering to officially end it or acknowledge that he was being a dick. Niall scrubs at the bowl in his hand with the sponge perhaps a bit too aggressively, unable to stop thinking about Harry’s hands all over him the last time they’d been alone together. Niall can remember that night crystal clearly, having dinner tangled on the sofa, making out a little bit, trying to tell Harry how he felt, only to have Harry cut him off by kissing him again, saying they’d talk later, and the conversation never happening. Harry leaving earlier than usual the next morning and things changing completely from there on out. He’d thought maybe the timing had finally been right, but Harry had apparently thought differently.

He’s again jarred from his thoughts by Harry putting his hand over Niall’s where he’s still scrubbing the now clean bowl. He feels like the skin to skin contact should send a jolt through him or something, like in the books he sometimes used to catch Harry reading (Niall will never admit to sometimes reading them himself), but instead he just tenses up and jerks his hand away.

Harry looks concerned. “You alright, Nialler?,” he asks, cocking his head to the side. His hair’s been mussed a bit, and his shirt is no longer fully tucked into his jeans.

“What happened to your date,” Niall blurts out, not so much a question as a statement, no longer able to keep his curiosity to himself. Surely Harry doesn’t think he’s _that_ hapless. Liam and Louis never would have trusted Niall alone with the girls if they didn’t think he could handle it, objectively he knows that.

Harry bites at his bottom lip, glances down at the floor. Niall wants to kiss him. “I just decided I’d rather be here, with the girls.” He pauses. “And with you, too.” He looks up, catches Niall’s eye.

Niall doesn’t know what to say to that. Harry’s the one who started seeing other people like it was going out of style, Harry was the one who’d stopped coming round to Niall’s on the weekend, and now he’s saying he wants to spend time together? What does that even mean? It’s not fair. Niall says as much, tells Harry he’s not being fair.

“What do you mean, I’m not being fair?” Harry looks genuinely confused. “I want to see you, how can you doubt that? Niall, I just, we can go back to how we were before, it’s fine, I just miss you.”

“What if I don’t want it to be how it was before?,” Niall asks. “Did you not hear a word I said to you last time? If you don’t want to do this for real, I don’t want to do this at all.”

Harry looks completely shell shocked, like he can’t believe Niall’s actually standing up for himself. It’s like he thought he’d be able to bully Niall back into being friends with benefits and Niall’s done with that. He deserves better, or so he’s been telling himself for weeks. Now that it’s on the table though, he realizes he’d rather take anything he can get from Harry and he’s about to cave, say they can go back to how it was, when he hears a door squeak from down the hall.

Harry had seemingly also been about to speak, and both of their mouths snap shut as Rosie comes into the kitchen, teddy clutched in her arms. Niall moves first. “What’s wrong, love?” he asks, going over to her and kneeling down.

“I didn’t get a bedtime song,” she sniffs at him, sticking out her lower lip in a pout.

“That’s because you fell asleep before we could sing you one,” Niall tells her. “Come on, let’s go have a song and go to bed. Say goodnight to Uncle Harry.” She does so, and he takes her hand, leads her down the hall without glancing back. This is good, he thinks, it’ll give him a chance to work up his resolve again. This thing, whatever he and Harry have been doing, needs to be over and stay over. The not talking and pretending they aren’t together didn’t work, and as soon as he tried to talk to Harry about it, Harry hadn’t wanted to hear it. It’s like he wants all the benefits of a relationship without actually being in one, it’s so typical Harry that Niall could scream. 

Grace is blessedly silent in her room, apparently still asleep, and he follows Rosie into her tidy little space, all pinks and yellows, but with a wall full of Doncaster Rovers paraphernalia. Louis will never give up on that one, no matter how uninterested Rosie is; maybe he’ll have better luck when she’s older, or with Grace. He settles Rosie into bed, pulling the covers up to her chin. He sits on the edge, brushes her hair back out of her face.

“I’m glad Uncle Harry came too,” she says sleepily, already struggling to keep her eyes open. “Daddy said he probably wouldn’t.”

Niall raises his eyebrows. “When did Daddy say that?,” he asks her, hoping she doesn’t remember to tell Louis he asked. (He knows it’s in vain, she always tells Louis and he usually doesn’t mind, but his friends have been far too nosy for his taste of late.)

“Before you got here, he was telling Dad he wanted you both here tonight.” She snuggles in further, and huh, Niall thinks, maybe Louis and Liam trust Niall less than he thought. “Sing me a song please.”

\--

In the end, it takes three songs before Rosie actually falls asleep and Niall finds that Harry has mostly cleaned the lounge by the time he makes it back out to help.

“Hey,” Niall says as he steps into the room, interrupting Harry’s (failing) efforts to artfully arrange doll furniture so that it fits correctly into its carrying case. “Give it up, it’s a lost cause,” Niall tells him.

Harry’s lip quirks up, showing off his dimples. “You’re probably right.” He stands, brushing off his jeans and Niall can’t help but admire how good his legs look tonight. He can already feel his resolve weakening again.

He takes a deep breath and braces himself against the back of the sofa, which is conveniently positioned between him and Harry. “Why are you even here, Haz?” He doesn’t know what answer he’s looking for, but he just wants to know what’s going on. “Did Louis ask you to come? Because if they don’t trust me with the girls, I don’t know why they asked me to look after them in the first place.”

“Oh Niall, of course they trust you. Louis did tell me to come over here tonight, basically demanded it, but not because of the girls, you’re so great with them.” Harry looks like he doesn’t want to continue but Niall doesn’t say anything in response, letting the silence stretch out until he does. “He yelled at me to fix things with you and I wasn’t going to come and then I realized how dumb we, or at least I, have been being. I don’t know what you want from me, Niall, but I fucking miss my best friend.”

Niall doesn’t know what to say. He half wants to hug Harry, who looks like he may burst into tears, make up and act like nothing ever happened. But he still doesn’t know what Harry’s been thinking, or what he wants from Niall now. And here he’s saying he doesn’t know what _Niall_ wants, when he feels like he’s made that really clear.

Niall opens his mouth to speak, but Harry holds up a hand and cuts him off. “I want my best friend back,” he says, “and if that’s all I can have I’ll live with that, but I’ve never wanted to only be friends with you. I messed up and I’m so sorry.” He pauses then, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand.  

Niall lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Harry sure has some way of showing he wants to be more than friends, or friends at all, since he’s been dating anything that moves lately. “Why’d you freak out when I tried to talk to you about it then?”

Harry runs his hand through his hair, sinks down on the ottoman like he can’t bear to keep standing anymore. “I thought you could tell I wanted more from you and you were going to tell me to cool it. So I thought if I showed you it could be just sex, you’d drop it.”

Niall is so confused; if anything, he’d thought Harry was going to tell _him_ he was reading too much into things, but instead he wouldn’t even let him talk that night and then he’d started dating other people. If that wasn’t a clear signal that Harry wasn’t interested in Niall for more than sex, he wasn’t sure what was. So he’d started avoiding Harry altogether. “That’s not,” he begins, and stops. “You know that’s not how it is for me, right? It’s never been just sex, you and me.”

“I know,” Harry says, “I was just so scared of losing you and then I lost you and I know it was my fault but it sucked so much, Niall. And I didn’t realize how dumb I’d been until Liam ripped me a new one about breaking your heart and I started thinking that maybe I was so freaked out you were trying to let me down easy that I didn’t actually listen to what you were saying.” He looks up and Niall realizes he hasn’t seen Harry this vulnerable in years, maybe. He hadn’t realized how closed off Harry has become, even to him.

Niall finally pushes back from the sofa, makes his way to where Harry’s sitting in the middle of the room, drops to his knees in front of him. “Harry,” he says, “you realize I was trying to tell you I’m in love with you, right?”

Harry nods, runs his hands down Niall’s arms and back up to his shoulders. Niall grips his biceps to keep him close. Harry leans forward, rests their foreheads together. “I love you too,” he says, so quiet that if they were any further apart, Niall might not have heard it.  

He’d imagined Harry saying those words so many different ways; hell, Harry had said them before, but not like this, not in an actual full fledged romantic kind of way. He pulls back enough to see Harry’s face, his eyes ringed red with tears. “Just to be clear, you want to be my boyfriend, right?”

Harry’s face breaks into a grin. “Yes, baby, that’s exactly what I want, if you’ll have me.”

“I guess you’ll do,” Niall says, returning Harry’s grin and leaning up to kiss him.

\--

Liam and Louis come home an hour later to find them curled together on the sofa watching _Frozen_ , or at least pretending to. 

“I thought you were sick of this film,” Liam comments, taking off his jacket and folding it carefully over the back of the sofa, giving them a knowing grin as he does it.

“Couldn’t figure out how to work the DVD player to put something else on,” Harry admits. “Rosie did it earlier.”

“Didn’t really matter what film we put on anyway,” Niall mutters, grinning up at Harry. Louis makes a disgusted face as he comes back in from checking on the girls, comments on the indecency of it all, and then tells them to take it to one of their own flats and out of his, please and thank you. They’re more than happy to do so.  

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to say hi to me on [Tumblr](http://clonesareus.tumblr.com)!


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